When SF State faculty members checked their e-mail Monday afternoon, a message titled “Faculty Contract Negotiations Update” was waiting in their inboxes.

Sent by SF State President Robert A. Corrigan, the e-mail addressed ongoing negotiations between the California Faculty Association and the California State University system over new faculty salary contracts.

Since June 30, 2004, the CFA has been bargaining with CSU Chancellor Charles Reed for a salary increase, but in the process of negotiation the CFA has found the terms of their expired contract with the CSU extended again and again.

With the current contract extension due to expire Sept. 30 and negotiations at a stalemate, Corrigan’s e-mail sympathized with the efforts of the CFA, but also made clear his support for the CSU’s most recent contract proposal.

“I believe that the CSU has offered reasonable solutions to unresolved issues,” Corrigan said in his e-mail.

The CFA thinks otherwise.

“Their salary proposals are very deceptive,” said Linda Ellis, president of the SF State chapter of the CFA. “There’s hidden fine print that will result in faculty getting less in the long term.”

Ellis likened the new contract proposal to the warning labels on the packaging of prescription medicine.

“The print is so fine that they don’t give anything without taking something back,” she said.

Ellis explained that while the proposal looks good on paper, the CFA has interpreted many of its “reasonable solutions” as quick fixes.

“It’s like giving the people money now so they’ll shut up,” she said.

Asella Donovan-Blood, an SF State CFA student intern, shares Ellis’s disappointment in the new contract proposal because she feels the salary gap between CSU faculty and faculty in other states results in a retention loss on CSU campuses.

“Teachers are leaving because they can make more money and live more cheaply in another state,” Donovan-Blood said.

Despite Corrigan’s expressed hope that the CFA accept the terms of the new contract, Ellis and her colleagues made it clear they have no intention of signing off on the proposal.

“We’re willing to take a reasonable raise,” Ellis said, but only if it has provisions for the long-term welfare of CSU faculty members.

Until the CFA feels that their needs have been met a number of public protests have been organized for the coming months. Student support groups have created a “Stop the Rip-offs” campaign, and members of the CFA plan to stage a bake-sale like scenario to demonstrate their need for alternative means of income.

A hard copy of the CFA's official response to Corrigan's e-mail was distributed in faculty mailboxes today.